Hesiod's Works and Days: Moral or Practical Teaching?
Panayiotis P. Mavrommatis
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
21H.301 The Ancient World: Greece
Hesiod's Works and Days is undeniably a didactic poem. It is concerned
with real problems of mankind. At a first glance it may seem as a practical guide
to living and prospering in the Ancient Greek world. The title itself, along with the
many parts of the poem that deal with practical issues can lead one to this
conclusion. A more careful analysis, however, can show that Works and Days is
more about morality. Undeniably it also deals with the practice of morality, but the
main axis of the poem is not that; it is morality itself.
The first part of this paper attempts to present the abundance of moral
elements in the poem. The occasion of the poem is injustice, but Hesiod does not
stop there. He talks about war and peace, religion, family as well as society, all
crucial issues both then and now. In the second part, I argue against the view
that Works and Days is mostly a practical teaching poem. Instead, I trace the
importance of practical instruction in the poem as being support to Hesiod's main
teaching goal, morality.
Probably the most important issue for the poet is injustice. In fact, it is to
injustice that we may owe this poem: Perses, Hesiod's brother has tricked him in
a matter of inheritance. Moreover, the lords, to whom the poet had applied for
justice, had been bribed by Perses and have misjudged to his favor. The
complaint about this injustice, especially that of the lords, is of great importance,
since it reveals the fact that Hesiod (and thus any member of the community)
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was not afraid to accuse the lords in public. Along with injustice, Hesiod warns
about a society ruled by the powerful, when he foretells about the future
generations that “law and decency will be in fists”, (West, Hesiod's Works and
Days 191). This ethical issue is also presented in the story of the hawk and the
nightingale. This tale is well known, although in a quite different version, as one
of Aesop's tales. The main difference between the two versions lies in the fact
that, in Aesop's tale, as in almost all of his tales, talking animals simply represent
some classes of people. Hesiod's version of the tale, on the other hand, reminds
us that people are actually very different from animals. In particular, he points out
that the law of the jungle that prevails in the world of animals should not
dominate our world too: “So spoke the swift-flying hawk, the great winged bird.
But you, Perses, must hearken to Right and not promote violence” (West,
Hesiod's Works and Days 213)
Apart from injustice, a very significant issue for the poet is that of religion.
Religion appears everywhere in the poem, from the first word, “Muses”, to the
last sentence, “well with god” (West, Hesiod's Works and Days 1, 826). The
belief that disobeying or tricking the Gods leads to disaster is emphasized by the
myth of Prometheus, whose action to steal the fire from Zeus lead to the fact that
a man must work to find his food, as well as to many other evils that were
released from Pandora's box. (Hesiod, Works and Days 48-104) Serving and
sacrificing to the immortals is another aspect of religion stressed by Hesiod
(Hesiod, Works and Days 336-7). Moreover, the failure to respect these rules is
implied as the main reason for the extinction of the second, Silver race of men:
According to the poet, the Gods destroyed the Silver race since they neglected to
offer respect to them (Hesiod, Works and Days 135-40).
Hesiod is also concerned with the moral issue of war and peace. While
Hesiod's world “is a world without war”, (Osborne, Greece in The Making p. 146)
the consequences of previous wars are presented in an effort to emphasize the
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irrationality of violent actions and the importance of peace. An example is the
destruction of the Bronze race of men: With “woeful works of Ares and with acts
of violence ... they were laid low by their own hands” (West, Hesiod's Works and
Days 146-55) Peace is also praised in a non-mythological context, for its
beneficial effects on the land and the people. (West, Hesiod's Works and Days
225-37)
Moreover, a substantial part of Works and Days is concerned with the
relationships of people with their families as well as with community in general.
Hesiod foresees the decline of his own race, the Iron one, with reference to
people losing respect to their aging parents and blasting crude words towards
them. (West, Hesiod's Works and Days 185, 330). The poem also provides
advice for social behavior, in terms of neighbor relationships and donating to
society. Furthermore, he warns that the actions of a single man may adversely
affect the whole community. (West, Hesiod's Works and Days 260-6)
The above issues are the main moral concerns of Hesiod in Works and
Days. Beyond these elements, as the title suggests, Hesiod cites much practical
instruction as to how to work and when to do so. Even though this advice
constitutes a large proportion of the poem (about two thirds of it), a number of
reasons suggest that Works and Days is more about morality than it is about
practical teaching.
Firstly, I argue that most of the practical elements presented in the poem
are simply used as means to the end of teaching morality. The poem would be
incomplete without arguments and examples of how to implement the moral
theory cited. All of the practical advice found in Works and Days is associated to
one or more moral issues. For example, the largest part and the main theme of
Hesiod's practical advice is work, both in the land and the sea. The poet
organizes his advice very carefully, providing several subtasks and giving the
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proper time margins in which each subtask should take place. However, one
should also regard the reasons why Hesiod describes in such detail how one
should work. Some of these reasons can be traced in the poem: Hesiod
mentions “whatever your fortune, work is preferable, that is, if you turn your
blight-witted heart from others' possessions towards work” (West, Hesiod's
Works and Days 313-5), giving the moral advantages of work: It keeps you from
stealing and being jealous of the others. In addition to this, work helps one avoid
begging for money or goods from others, a significant moral issue for the poet
who himself experiences Perses soliciting for food or employment. (West,
Hesiod's Works and Days 394-6) On the contrary, work allows you to offer
voluntarily, a moral action than brings pleasure to the giver. (West, Hesiod's
Works and Days 358-61)
Finally, there are several reasons that suggest that Works and Days is of
no significant practical value. Despite the length of the practical instruction in the
poem, the value of this teaching is doubtable, and compared to the moral
elements that have been cited above, it only constitutes a secondary feature.
First of all, the practical advice offered to the audience is no less known to the
average Greek of that age than it is to Hesiod. The poet does not suggest any
new discoveries or a new way of living; most of the advice can be classified as
common knowledge. It is well known that the main occupations of the Greeks at
the period were agriculture and sailing. In such a society, therefore, it is natural to
assume that people knew very well their jobs and that all the advice cited by
Hesiod was not secret or original. Another fact that supports the above is that
Hesiod himself had an extremely limited experience in sailing: “I have never yet
sailed the broad sea, except to Euboea from Aulis”, a distance of 65 meters
(West, Hesiod's Works and Days 647-9). This does not necessarily mean that
Hesiod made up of all these practical advice about sailing; rather that he himself
listened to the sailors and rephrased what he had heard in his poem, or used
other traditional poems and compiled them to a version of his own.
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Furthermore, Hesiod's calendar is not as one could claim completely
didactic. A large portion of the calendar is superstitious and not practical at all:
An example of that is advice of this kind: “The middle 6th is ... good for a man's
birth; for a girl, however, it is not suitable, either to be born or to marry.” (West,
Hesiod's Works and Days 780-3) It would need extreme caution and luck to
make sure that a woman doesn't give birth to a child (boy or girl) in the middle 6th,
since she wouldn't know the sex of the child she was carrying. Finally, some of
the advice is simply common sense, both now and back then. One particular
example is the one about what to wear on your feet and how to cover your head
in the cold (Hesiod Works and Days 540-5) Later on, the poet advices the worker
to work before the dawn, in order to avoid the morning rain or the hot sun, and to
have a dog in order to protect his house. To summarize, clearly the poem does
not teach practical things to someone today, and from the above one can see
that if it did teach something to the people of those days, this was not practical
but moral.
In conclusion, Works and Days is a poem about morality. Hesiod is
concerned with almost all the moral issues of his world: Law, justice and
injustice, religion, peace and war, as well as matters of family and community,
issues that have tortured generations and are still torturing us today. A large part
of the poem is dedicated to some practical instruction, which, under a more
careful analysis, turns out to either be support for Hesiod's arguments about
morality or advice already known by the majority and thus of no significant
practical value. All these strongly suggest that Works and Days is more
concerned with moral rather than practical teaching.
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